HSE boss defends trolley numbers

ONE person on a trolley is one too many, HSE chief Bernard Gloster has told the Oireachtas Health Committee.

He said that reducing trolley numbers will be ‘the focus’ for 2024, and agreed that the high level of overcrowding in Limerick hospital in particular is unacceptable.

There were 638 patients on a trolley nationwide yesterday.

On Tuesday, INMO general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: ‘We are coming out the other side of another bank holiday where hospital overcrowding remains completely out of control.’

Mr Gloster, who took up his post a year ago, also accepted that the HSE could ‘come up short’. ‘I am conscious that many people remain challenged in their confidence in us as an organisation,’ he said.

‘This is in part because there are times, we “come up short” for them. While the evidence shows a lot of improvement it is clear there is a significant way to go.’

However, he said that the HSE saw a surge in staff numbers last year, with the workforce bigger than ever.

It has risen by over a fifth, 21.8%, since the end of 2019, to 145,985 full-time posts.

He said that rate was unsustainable, but that despite the recruitment embargo, it is planned to raise staff numbers this year by a further 2,268 health workers and 683 people in disability services.

He said he hoped to bring the HSE to a point where measures such as a recruitment embargo are not necessary, and the workforce showed the ‘best productivity possible’.

Questioned over hospital overcrowding, he pointed to ‘very substantial improvements’ in reducing the number of people aged over 75 who were waiting on trolleys for over 24 hours.

‘We really have moved to a zerotolerance type of approach,’ he said.